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Each year, the Hansard Society conducts an Audit of Political Engagement, which seeks to measure how the public views and engages with the political process. The latest Audit demonstrates that public dissatisfaction with our political systems and actors is worryingly high and increasingly intense. However, as Lawrence McKay explains, disaffection has not yet translated into disengagement.

The Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement,now in its sixteenth year, is an annual study, giving a benchmark to measure public opinion about politics and the political system, as well as how engaged people are in the process. The Society describes it as an ‘annual health check’ – and this time round, the patient is in a bad way. Commentators love to declare a crisis, and the Societyhas often cautioned against such framing. More often than not, there is more continuity than change. Yet this year’s findings can hardly be described any other way.

Opinions of the system of governing are at their lowest point in the 15-year Audit series – worse now than in the aftermath of the MPs’ expenses scandal. People are pessimistic about the country’s problems, and large segments of the public seem willing to entertain radical changes which would alter or even undermine our democracy. While they are no less engaged in the democratic process, many people increasingly want to keep their distance and not to take part in decision-making.

Discontent: more widespread and more intense

The striking thing about this year’s Audit is that not only are more people unhappy, but the intensity of their discontent is unprecedented. Our ‘core indicators’ are the best evidence that something is amiss – in particular, our question on ‘the present system of governing Britain’, and how much it could be improved. We find that discontent is at its historical peak, with more than seven-in-ten feeling it needs either ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of improvement. Furthermore, people are moving into the most negative category. The proportion who stated that it needs ‘a great deal’ of improvement, at 37%, has roughly doubled since the first Audit in 2004. This increased discontent is broad-based, occurring across all social classes, age groups and levels of education. If there is a common thread to where it occurs, it is among non-voters where discontent has risen most. It may be that people who are already disengaged are finding more reasons to hate politics, but many voters are, too.

Yet, while the wider system is held in contempt, it is mostly political actors that bear the brunt of this. We asked our respondents to give their level of confidence in different groups ‘to act in the best interests of the public’. Groups like civil servants and judges generally garnered positive ratings, but the government, MPs, Lords and political parties were judged more negatively, with around two-in-three expressing low or no confidence. The exception – in line with results of previous studies – was local councils and the Scottish government who were seen somewhat more positively than UK-wide actors. Continue reading →

The fiscal powers of English local authorities are extremely limited. In recent years there have been many proposals for significant fiscal devolution to take place, but little progress has been made on this agenda. In this post Mark Sandford argues that there are three fundamental reasons for this: the nature of the UK state, the complexity involved and equity considerations.

The mid-2010s have seen an unprecedented number of proposals for devolution of fiscal powers to local authorities in England. The coalition government’s ‘devolution deal’ policy, together with the substantial fiscal devolution granted to Scotland in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum, have encouraged many stakeholders to believe that English local government is on the cusp of a breakthrough in the balance of revenue-raising power between local and central government (Morrin and Blond 2015; Centre for Cities 2015). Some have produced reports containing substantial proposals for fiscal devolution to English local authorities (Centre for Cities 2015; ICLGF 2015; ICLGFW 2016; London Finance Commission 2017; EEF 2017). Associated concepts such as place-based budgets, raising borrowing caps, commercial councils and local government restructuring have also attracted attention as potential solutions to English local government’s financial challenges.

I suggest that these hopes and plans arise from an over-optimistic reading of the political landscape. Most of the key drivers of the apparent ‘devolutionary turn’ in England are ephemeral and highly dependent on ‘constitutional entrepreneurs’ and windows of opportunity. Developments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are matters of high politics. English devolution deals and the retention of business rates by local authorities were largely driven by former Chancellor George Osborne. Inertia and Brexit will drag hugely on all policy innovations in the 2017–22 parliament. The confusion of local administrative boundaries, public bodies and contested local identities have long frustrated strategic approaches to local governance in England.

But this type of political headwind is priced in by commentators. There are three more fundamental reasons why fiscal devolution in England was always likely to face insurmountable obstacles, which relate to the nature of the UK state, the complexity of the change implied, and to local equity. These have been largely lost in the warm glow of consensual causes such as inclusive growth and regional prosperity. They run beneath the day-to-day debate on policy solutions, and offer a more cultural account of the critical relationships at issue.

Last Tuesday the government published their draft Wales Bill. Among its provisions are devolution of control of the electoral system for Welsh Assembly and local government elections. In this post Roger Scully explains the significance of this.

It was all fun and games in Wales last Tuesday, as the draft Wales Bill was published by the UK Government. This putative piece of legislation has had quite a long gestation – a process that includes both the second Silk Commission report (published in spring 2014) and the cross-party talks that generated this spring’s St David’s Day declaration.

There has already been, and will doubtless continue to be, much debate about the draft bill, at least among the Welsh political class. I think it is fair to say, given the reception accorded the draft bill, that it is far from certain to become legislation at all, and certainly not in quite this form. The bill will need to go through both Houses of Parliament. It will also need to be supported by the National Assembly. At present, we are only at the stage of draft legislation, which will face pre-legislative scrutiny in parliament from the Welsh Affairs Committee over the next few months.

The London borough of Hackney has had an elected Mayor since 2002, when Jules Pipe was elected into office. Mr Pipe argued that Hackney faced series issues at the time; crime rates were high, the council’s finances were in a poor state, and educational attainment was low.

Mr Pipe recognised that before changes could be made in the borough, changes would have to be made to the council itself. His first priorities were to reintroduce good governance and financial competence. In practice this meant improving the lines of communication within the council, developing a shared vision, and pursuing the best value for money for the borough.

The new Mayor set high standards for his team, bringing in experienced people and fostering a performance management culture. Their aim was to improve the services that would benefit the whole community, focussing on projects such as building new schools, resurfacing roads and improving public amenities.

In his view, it remains vitally important to work with other bodies, such as the Police and the London Mayor, to achieve the best results for Hackney. Mr Pipe’s long-term goal is to improve the reputation of Hackney, so as to encourage commercial investment.

Lord Adonis

Lord Adonis explained how he first became involved in the campaign for elected Mayors after being invited to speak at the Lunar Society in Birmingham last year. In his view, the city lacked a coherent vision for the future; what it needed was a Mayor to fight for Birmingham’s interests.

According to Lord Adonis, a recent study has shown that only 16% of people think they know who the leader of their local council is – and half of those get it wrong. In his view, having directly elected Mayors would raise the profile of local politics, and improve local council accountability.

Despite the largely negative response to elected Mayors in the recent referendums, Lord Adonis believes that all major cities could have elected Mayors within 15 to 20 years. He argues that the introduction of elected Police Commissioners in November will help the case for elected Mayors, as they will have some of the powers of elected Mayors.

Note prepared by Jeremy Swan, intern on the Unit’s Special Advisers project.

Boris Johnson may have won the Mayoral race in London, however the rest of England didn’t take to a “Boris for every city”. Nine out of ten cities participating in the coalition’s referenda on directly elected mayors (May 3) rejected the idea; only Bristol backed the proposals. The referenda were also overshadowed by poor turnout rates with an average of 28.8% across the country and only 24% in Bristol. Given that localism is one of the coalition’s main drives, what next for the government’s credentials in this area?

The proposed “Mayors Cabinet” will unlikely go ahead now, but the mayoral agenda will certainly not end here. Liverpool and Bristol will “flaunt” their mayors to influence national policy as London has done in the last decade[1]. The coalition will do likewise to save face and rejuvenate their localism strategy. Other cities therefore may find themselves wishing for mayors and they don’t have to wait on another national referendum. Let’s not forget that Liverpool, Salford, Doncaster and Leicester have all appointed mayors in the last year through local referenda or local council agreement. The “big-bang” reform the coalition hoped for hasn’t quite happened but change is still likely to creep along. One idea gaining traction is “metro mayors”, which would look after transport, planning and policing across city-regional travel-to-work areas (an idea Lord Adonis will discuss at a Constitution Unit seminar on May 22). [2]

The low turnout raises deeper questions on public enthusiasm for localism. With only 28.8% of people voting nationally, can the government carry localism forward? Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are due to be elected on 15 November, whose credibility will be questioned on a 10-20% turnout. Localism has good devolutionary intent but people need to feel involved. Citizens should have had a hand in shaping mayors’ roles before the referenda and we cannot be surprised that people voted against an office they did not call for with undefined powers, pay and job description.

Ultimately, the coalition has tried to provide the groundwork for a system few are yet interested in using and found themselves in a Catch-22 situation. How does one force localism from the top? To continue driving the localism agenda forward the government needs to gain this hard-face experience, and refocus on facilitating rather than imposing policy. Elected mayors may have a future yet, but it now lies in the hands of local communities rather than Westminster.

Following our report on FOI and local government in England, we have had some interesting reflections on how FOI works elsewhere. One of the really interesting points concerns how users are often focused on ‘local’ access to issues that are of importance to them. High profile expenses stories aside, FOI is actually about making a difference at the level of your own street or ‘micro-politics’ as someone wiser than me called it. Could this also be the way for new Open Data innovations such as fix my street?

Here’s the FOI (or FOIL) view from New York state:

‘Our FOI law (known by many as “FOIL”) has been in effect since 1974, and this office was created as part of the law. There are approximately 100 state agencies, but more important to most residents are the thousands of local government agencies, i.e., counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts and the like. Most residents have little connection with federal agencies in their daily lives and rarely have occasion to seek records under the federal FOIA. A few have relationships with and a need to gain access to records of state agencies. But everyone has a need at some point to seek information from local government, perhaps in relation to an environmental issue, building code and land use issues, the assessment of homes and other real property, the means by which taxpayers’ dollars are used or allocated by school districts, the qualifications of teachers and other public employees, the effectiveness of law enforcement functions – – the possibilities are endless.

We have also found, in general, that the smaller the unit of government, the more likely it is to be open. In short, there is direct accountability. Most residents here, in the capital city of Albany, would recognize the Mayor walking down the street. Few would recognize their congressman.

In short, despite the focus on Washington and the federal FOI Act, I believe that a local access to information law, such as the 50 separate state FOI laws in the US, or a law of general application that includes local government within its coverage, is of primary significance and utility to the average person. Further, for reasons suggested earlier, local government officials are more likely to comply with law and to be accountable that those higher up in the governmental chain of command.’

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The Constitution Unit in the Department of Political Science at University College London is the UK’s leading research body on constitutional change.

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